SAUGUS — Elected officials and residents expressed their strong opposition Thursday morning to a proposal from the City of Boston, which aims to clean up its so-called “Methadone Mile” by relocating homeless people from Melnea Cass Boulevard to a hotel on the Revere/Saugus line.
Boston’s homeless living in that neighborhood, which is located primarily in Dorchester, would be taken to the Quality Inn on Bennett Highway, a proposal that has drawn strong opposition from Revere’s Mayor Brian Arrigo.
On Thursday, Saugus had its say with a crowd of more than 50 residents filling the Town Hall Auditorium for an early-morning Board of Selectmen meeting, which was largely devoted to the controversial proposal. Joining residents and the selectmen were state Reps. Donald Wong (R-Saugus), Jeffrey Turco (D-Winthrop) and Jessica Giannino (D-Revere), as well as the town’s fire and police chiefs, Michael Newbury and Michael Ricciardelli.
At the meeting, Selectman Debra Panetta claimed that the people of Saugus are unanimously opposed to the proposal. Concerns cited by others attending the meeting centered around the health and safety of the homeless people being transported to the hotel, the lack of transportation for those people, and the strain that such a move would put on the town’s police and fire departments, in terms of their resources.
Panetta said that these homeless individuals need care and that that problem won’t be fixed by this plan, which was proposed by Boston’s acting Mayor Kim Janey.
“They need to be close to hospitals,” said Panetta. “They need support systems, and basically what the current mayor is doing is just picking them up and putting them on Route 1, which is not the safest place.”
Citing what she called Boston’s world-renowned medical centers, Panetta said she doesn’t know why homeless individuals are being moved somewhere else.
“You don’t just pick them up and stick them in a hotel room,” said Panetta. “How is that good for those residents? How does that help those residents? It doesn’t. You are taking people who are sick and that need help and you are just putting them away on a busy street.”
Panetta said she was also upset about the lack of collaboration between Boston and the two municipalities — Revere and Saugus — that would be impacted by the move.
Giannino, who is also opposed to the plan, said that the City of Revere only found out about the proposal due to a request for additional police details in the city; she said Boston’s mayor failed to reach out to both Revere and Saugus officials to discuss the proposal.
“There was no communication,” Giannino said. “No one gave the mayor of Boston permission to do this. The mayor of Revere was never asked. The state delegation was never asked or notified. Your town manager was never asked or notified. I think many of us found out (by) reading the Boston Globe.”
Panetta agreed.
“There was no collaboration with Revere,” Panetta said. “The mayor (Brian Arrigo) — he was dumbfounded as well. Nobody knew that this was even being proposed. For me personally, I think it was all political on the part of the Boston mayor.
“There was no collaborative plan; there was no plan at all,” she added. “Instead of trying to come up with a solution on how to deal with this issue, they are just going to pick it up and move it.”
Besides the hotel’s proximity to Saugus, Panetta also mentioned concerns about putting individuals who frequently struggle with addiction right next to a liquor store.
“It’s just bad all around,” she said.
